"That's Tiger's ball!" a man shouts as the little white orb shoots past me and skids to a halt some fifty feet off the fairway, perched atop needles that have settled under the high pines of the ninth hole. (Opening photo: The scoreboard below the club house, right of the first fairway.)
As usual, he has out-driven the players in his threesome, but this time the shot is somewhat off course. We move quickly, gathering around the ball leaving Tiger just enough room for his back swing and a clear angle through the woods to the ninth green. He crouches to inspect the trajectory his ball must travel under the low-hanging branches and up the slope toward the yellow flag that marks the hole.
He confers briefly with his caddy and without hesitation pulls an iron from his golf bag, lines up the shot and, WHOOSH! He takes what has become one of the most recognizable and enviable swings in the game. The ball stays low for some 40 feet slipping under the trees before coming into the clear and climbing the hill in a perfect loft to reach the green and land inside 25 feet from the pin. The patrons, as spectators are known at this event, erupt in cheers sprinkled with expressions of "Get in the hole!" and "You're the man!"
Halfway through the second day of the 2004 contest, we've just seen one more display of precision shot making by Tiger Woods, the game's best-known young player and its Number One icon worldwide.
We're here at the Augusta National Country Club in Augusta, Georgia, home of The Masters - golf's greatest competition. And we're here as part of this grand gathering due in large part to a young man who, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, had a magnificent idea for a golf course and a national tournament. Following his retirement from championship golf in 1930 at age twenty eight, Bobby Jones, winner of 13 major championships in the seven years prior and the game's first Grand Slam Champion (then completed by winning the U.S Amateur and U.S. Open and the British Amateur and British Open in the same year) was poised to pursue his idea of building a new kind of golf course.
He got together with Clifford Roberts, a friend of Jones since the mid- 1920s, and in 1931 the two looked to Augusta with its Georgia Pines, soft hills, and temperate climate as the place to realize their dream. They purchased the 365-acre property called Fruitland Nurseries and retained Dr. Alister Mackenzie as architect for what would become Augusta National.
Jones' vision was for a course that would utilize the natural advantages of the property using mounds rather than too many bunkers to create challenges for the players. In our days at Augusta we will walk the 18 holes, sprinting over fairways and through tall pines to chase players, skirting past water hazards and sand traps, climbing over Jones' mounds and up and down the abundant hills. And more than once I will think to myself, "Man, is there any level ground on this course?"
The Augusta National Golf Club had its formal opening in January of 1933 with the first National Invitation Tournament a year later in 1934. In 1937, club members began to wear the signature green jackets during the tournament so that patrons could easily identify a reliable source of information. Just two years later, in 1939, the competition officially became known as The Masters and in 1949 the first green jacket "trophy" was awarded to Sam Snead, that year's Masters Champion.
Over the half century Fruitland Nurseries had been in business its owners had imported trees and plants from around the globe. While the nursery had ceased operation more than a decade before the tandem of Jones and Roberts arrived, there were still a wide variety of flowering plants and trees on the property. This variety included a row of magnolias, which was planted before the Civil War and another plant, popularized by the former owners, called the Azalea. Today, visitors to Augusta National enter through the main gate and drive 330 yards between the 61 Magnolia trees that line the legendary Magnolia Lane before arriving at the Founders Circle in front of the clubhouse, a building that dates back 150 years to a man named Dennis Redmond, owner of what was then an indigo plantation. In the Founders Circle are two plaques, one dedicated to Bobby Jones and the other to Clifford Roberts.
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By Jim Hollister Jetsetters Magazine Correspondent. Read Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com
